COMMUNICATING ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES TO POST-MODERN URBAN AUDIENCES THROUGH POPULAR ARTS

The reality of climate change is becoming self-evident with increasing population pressure in urban areas due to man’s increased insensitivity to the environment with ever-mounting waste production that is hardly managed. The complexity and acuteness of this problem places a heavy burden on all conventional communication systems and operatives. Effective communication, which can lead to attitudinal change, becomes difficult in view of increased urbanisation and globalised audiences who have been caught up in a post-modern setting. How the popular arts within the communication sector can be used to overcome these intricate social complications and contradictions in the effective communication of environmental issues forms the bone of this paper. The basic assumptions for this paper are that: (a) Climatic change due to human insensitivity to his environment has become evident. (b) Conventional information media have not been effective because of increased alienation of the urban populations. (c) This failure arises from the globalised, post-modern nature of the urban audiences, which require new media arts approach to be effectively informed.